Abstract
Bridge Management aims to provide an appropriate support to decision-making for maintenance, rehabilitation and repair strategies under constraint of limited budgets. In this regard, the Federal Brazilian Department of Transportation (DNIT) has developed the SGO - a Brazilian Bridge Management System (B-BMS) - and promoted the most comprehensive road bridge inventory under its direct administration. To improve the management of these bridge assets, the DNIT is working to develop a statistical model to predict the future condition of bridge: the most efficient and effective tool in a BMS to planning when the maintenance actions will be required. The current paper reports on findings of inventory, predominantly composed of reinforced concrete bridges, focusing on potential deterioration agents reported and checking their influence on deterioration conditions. Based on national database, the paper proposes a methodology to forecast Brazilian bridges deterioration rates. An example of application is demonstrated and satisfactory prediction accuracy obtained, even for few inspection cycles and under restricted database information.
Keywords:
bridge management systems; bridge inventory; bridge deterioration models; Markov chains
